


Ghost in the Machine

by halotolerant



Category: The Professionals
Genre: First Kiss, First Time, Friends to Lovers, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-25
Updated: 2014-01-25
Packaged: 2018-01-10 00:55:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1152878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halotolerant/pseuds/halotolerant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Bodie wasn’t exactly an emergency (though the case could be made), but he was there, filling time and space and really all of Ray’s senses at once, and chasing away the last guilt Ray was feeling about the paperwork he’d told himself he’d do that evening.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ghost in the Machine

**Author's Note:**

> From a prompt challenge at the LJ comm 'The Safehouse' in 2008, writing fics using existing book titles. Draycevixen had prompted 'The Ghost in the Machine'

Sometimes life makes you pile things up, day after day, task after task, uncompleted duty after forgotten letter, good ideas pushed aside to make time for emergencies.

The consequences hit you later, the things that fell through the sieve. The sorts of things you eventually find behind sofa cushions or in the bottom of in-trays, the things so important that you put them somewhere they couldn’t be lost and then never found again.

When it’s time or money or opportunities, fair enough.

Sometimes, though, you lose yourself.

Ray could reach his hands out into the stream of events, the minutes and hours racing past, always aware that while he was looking in one place something was passing in another, and even the searching didn’t feel like him anymore. His conscience, haunting the corridors of his consciousness, waiting for something more.

Entropy; things falling apart and away. From something as ridiculous as whatever he wanted to call personal conviction, to the steam that showed the escaping heat from the takeaway on the counter.

The whole bloody room was freezing – Ray had pinned his gas bill to the notice-board on his CI5 desk and grown so used to having it there that he’d never paid it.

So now Ray was lying there on the bed, freezing cold. At least, precisely up until the point his skin met Bodie’s.

Bodie wasn’t exactly an emergency (though the case could be made), but he was there, filling time and space and really all of Ray’s senses at once, and chasing away the last guilt Ray was feeling about the paperwork he’d told himself he’d do that evening.

Ray pressed his lips to where the skin was soft and thin behind Bodie’s ear, hugging Bodie to keep his balance, both of them kneeling on the bed and Ray leaning in, kissing that skin and down under the angle of the jaw, hunting out the place to make Bodie hitch his breath, clench his hands harder on Ray’s arms and thrust without meaning to.

The air near Bodie’s skin was warm and smelt rough and perfect, and Ray breathed deeper, almost ragged with the pleasure of it.

Bodie, Bodie, Bodie. Here. Now. It was terrifyingly like nothing was being missed at all.

\- - -

It had still been light when they’d got to Ray’s flat. They’d even been able to watch the six o’clock news, although that was scarcely what they’d raced through their paperwork for, and Ray had thought guiltily of the small stack of unprocessed mimeographed A4 he’d left on the night shift’s desk with a scrawled note. It had been yet another strange day, filled with glances and nods and swallowed sentences. There had been a fantastically awkward few minutes during changing after athletic training, both of them naked together but in the wrong context, or should Ray really think of it as the right one?

Nine days since... Nine days of this state of affairs and Ray didn’t know how it worked yet.

\- - -

Nine days since Ray had driven too fast out of Blackwall docks, clutching the wheel, gripping tight to hard plastic and faux leather, muscles so tense that he couldn’t shake, peering through the rain with as much concentration as he could muster, because it would be so easy to miss a kid running across the road in this.              

His lips had been dry and raw – he’d kept licking them, absently, chasing traces. And he’d been cold; he’d pulled the jacket off before getting in, the warm leather second skin that had probably landed in someone’s garden when he chucked it. Yeah, a nice old lady would wander down to water her plants tomorrow morning and find it on her roses, brown leather and darker brown blood and probably still smelling a bit like Bodie.

Outside his block of flats that night he’d sat in the car a while, leaning his forehead against the wheel and listening to the diminishing hum of the engine. Thin orange light filtered in; he’d looked in the rear view mirror but he appeared the same, unchanged.

Dorian Gray had a portrait, but Ray didn’t. He often caught himself looking at the still-smooth planes of his face and wondering how anyone could have watched themselves doing what he had done and not have it show.

The car had smelt of blood, leather and petrol and his hand as he rubbed his face had the sharp scent of too-much handled spare change. The ends of his fingers had been cold enough to make him shiver but he still remembered the heat, the moments when they’d been warm.

Flakes of dried blood under his fingernails. Well, there would be.

He hadn’t even been shot. The man in front of him had been. Felled by Bodie’s bullet, falling back onto Ray, blood going over them both, and Bodie had... yelled, called.

Screamed.

Ray’d hurt his leg, going over, and it had stunned him a little, and the next thing he’d been aware of was the weight lifting, Bodie’s face and Bodie’s breathing, fast and shallow.

“Ray,” Bodie touched him, touched his face, checked his arms. “Ray? Shit.”

Ray had been covered in blood, hands and chest and hair, up his nostrils, and in his eyes. Ugly as his job, a stinking, sticky reminder why the point of it all was slipping through his hands like a kite string, and Bodie touched him anyway and said “Ray” in that voice.

And kissed him.

It was one of the few things Ray hadn’t missed seeing coming, but he’d thought...

Ray had gripped the steering wheel again, had kicked out at the floor of the car. Sometimes life lets you believe you’re in control, because it lets you ignore the things you know you’re not going to be able to cope with.

\- - -

Nine days of not knowing what to say, and today Bodie had followed him from the office and had got into his car without a word, and although Ray reckoned that if he’d said: _Fine, I’m tired, I have a hundred things to do, see you tomorrow,_ Bodie would have gone, he hadn’t said anything.

After the news there was nothing good on the TV and Ray couldn’t have watched it in any case, because he’d been feeling increasingly.... it was more like rage than anything, frustration that he just had no idea what to do and the seconds and minutes were streaming right past.

In the end he’d gone out to get a takeaway for dinner, walking fast and hard through the drizzling rain until he panted.

When he’d come back, in a fouler mood and with two white plastic bags laden with Chow Mein and silver slabs full of rice, Bodie had come to open it with him, standing next to him levering cardboard rectangles from hot food and darting away scalded fingers and then, before the pain had faded, Ray had found his back meeting the edge of the kitchen worktop and Bodie’s mouth had been on his.

Bodie kissed him quickly, Ray had found, as if the chance might end. There was nothing tentative, none of the slow teasing Ray had seen him employ often enough in bars and clubs, nothing like persuasion.

Like he didn’t think Ray would say no, or did and didn’t want to let him.

Ray wanted to attack in kind, and planned to, but somehow as his mouth had opened the relief hit; this wasn’t not happening.

Bodie had nudged closer, body softening and tongue pressing in.

Ray’s hands had fitted round Bodie’s head exactly, as he’d held him, as he’d let him in. His thumbs had moved, stroked, more from nervousness than anything, but Bodie had groaned and surged forwards, an onslaught of heat and life and energy and Ray had almost been knocked over, had almost fallen altogether.

\- - -

Now, Ray licked over the tendon he’d bitten in Bodie’s neck and felt Bodie shift again, felt the moisture where Bodie’s cock was brushing blindly against his stomach and then Bodie’s hands on his back, pulling him closer, right into the shadow of warmth between Bodie’s his  limbs.

It was far too close to being far too good. A shot of something-not-to-forget-anxiety reminded Ray about how easily he’d just... opened, earlier. How easily Bodie got into him. How easily he let him in.

And so somehow when Bodie started pushing him down to lie on the bed, eyes dark and deep, mouth a little open, swollen and bruised with kissing, the lower lip shiny and the glints on it translating to quivers between Ray’s legs, Ray stifled his train of thought, the one that said _let him_ , and pushed back instead.

They were both still kneeling and Ray rose up, until the skin of his stomach was rubbing at the underside of Bodie’s cockhead, the hard, red, weeping thing pressing a dent into the soft flesh just under Ray’s navel.

There was something... good about it, about the image and even the sensation – pre-come making Ray’s skin slick and Bodie’s cock rubbing and rubbing as Ray moved up and down on his knees. Ray didn’t want to... he looked away from Bodie’s face, and saw that his fists were clenched so hard in the duvet that his fingers had turned white. Ray stared, amazed and then couldn’t help but look at Bodie’s face to see if this, just this, was that good.

Bodie’s eyes were closed.

Ray moved faster and saw Bodie bite his lip. Then he found himself trying to lean forwards to suck at where Bodie’s teeth had torn the skin and only just caught himself in time.

Ray’s change in angle dug Bodie’s cock more deeply into him, and Bodie made a noise; a short, breathless thing which came out as a white cloud in the cold air.

At the same time, his eyes opened. He looked at Ray, right at Ray, at all of Ray, at where his cock pressed so chaste and obscene into Ray’s skin and up and into his eyes, maybe right into his mind, deep into the storm there.

Bodie’s eyes opened, and Ray curled over and kissed him just to not have to see the way they looked at him.

Bodie’s mouth was dry with panting, but familiar anyway, already familiar. Somewhere down on the bed Bodie’s hand found his, cold fingers squeezing tight.

Ray tried to get his other hand onto them, tried to grab and jack, because right now that would end this, Bodie as close as he could be and him not far behind.

The cold fingers again; Bodie’s other hand had caught and held him, stopping him.

“Bodie...” Ray heard the whine in his voice, the little break.

“Ray,” Bodie murmured in his ear, unhurried, breath impossibly warm.

Sometimes, Ray could feel it all leeching out of himself. The energy and the conviction, just going. Maybe with a body in front of him or maybe just buying food, the same old, again. His life was killing him, slow and draining, taking it all away.

Except here, now, there was Bodie, who’d seen and breathed the equator, who’d been and done and had, who knew a thousand people and liked none of them, who’d slept with spies and parachuted through the jungle; here, now, there was Bodie with him, under him, like for whatever reason he found Ray and his little grey struggle fascinating.

“Ray, please.”

Ray’s body was thrumming now, suffused with this heat, crooked pathways of pleasure spiralling deep through his stomach, getting tense and tremblesome, wanting.

“Ray...”

What it comes down to is this: Ray can’t help himself. Never could.

He guided Bodie’s fingers back, gasping a second because... oh god, oh that was not supposed to feel like...

Bodie smiled up at him, eyes dark and sparkling and maybe just a little smug, because it wouldn’t be Bodie otherwise.

Ray moved, Bodie groaned, and Ray moved again.

Bodie took his hand away. Ray just had time to remember that all too soon he would have to forget this, and then the fingers were pressing at his lips. Some old instinct told him to hit out for an insult like that, but instead for some reason he was opening, opening right up and sucking them down, flying a little higher every time Bodie swore.

Then they were dragging out, over his tongue; he fought, sucking them back and Bodie said: “Ray...” warningly, voice cracking.

The teasing brush again, then inside him, foreign and unnatural and _wide_ , yes, more.

Bodie fumbled a tube of something out of his discarded trousers; this was something ordinary for him, Ray thought, watching as he quickly slicked himself. Something that people just did.

Before Bodie was expecting him, Ray moved. Got over him, reaching down and angled himself and sank, slid.

OhFuckGodBodieBodie – you couldn’t lose your principles and your conscience and your integrity and fill the gap with a person, you couldn’t. You couldn’t lose the fight to keep your love for humanity and then find one tiny bright slice of it coming back to you in the hands of one man. It was wrong. It was...

Ray reached out this time, grabbed Bodie’s hand and clung on. He raised and lowered himself, feeling the burn rising in his thighs and the sheer bliss, fuck, from something inside him and... he didn’t feel empty. He didn’t feel empty at all.

\- - -

“You’re thinking again.”

Ray felt the brush of lips against the back of his neck, but didn’t turn around.

“Was it that bad?”

Ray stroked the hand around his middle. “It can’t happen again.”

“Why would you say a thing like that, eh?”

At that he did twist round, not quite prepared, as usual, for the way Bodie’s gaze got to him.

“This is a job, a bad job. One I should never have taken. It’s worn me out, Bodie. I don’t know what I’m doing or why I’m doing it, and...”

“And?”

“And you’re... You’re too much like a reason not to leave.”

Sometimes life gives you the answer too late, the one you should have figured out before the question. Ray saw the whole thing in that instant, minutes and hours laid out, every time he’d shut up or not questioned or obeyed, kills made and risks taken and all other sense abandoned, all not to leave or lose Bodie.

Bodie looked at him, frowned, and Ray was astonished to see that his predominant expression was fear. He opened his mouth, then shook his head and breathed out.

They lay in the dark a while. It was getting colder. Ray drifted in and out of sleep, surprised each time that Bodie was still there.

At first he thought it was a dream, but it wasn’t, the moment that Bodie pressed closer, warm and solid and for some reason trembling anyway, and said: “So... So, take me with you.”

\- - -


End file.
